


run faster than

by ODed_on_jingle_jangle



Category: Dare Me (TV 2019), Dare Me - Megan Abbott
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst and Tragedy, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Cannibalism, Complicated Relationships, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Delusions, Disturbing Themes, F/F, Graphic Description of Corpses, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, Heavy Angst, Horror, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Multi, Non-Explicit Sex, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Happy, Psychological Trauma, Statutory Rape, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Zombie Children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:54:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24937888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ODed_on_jingle_jangle/pseuds/ODed_on_jingle_jangle
Summary: Beth tears her way downstairs, machete swinging. One of the two zombies trying to climb up grabs at her ankle and she rapidly jerks her foot out of reach, smashing her boot down on the back of its rotten head. Its teeth clack loudly against the hardwood beneath a much wetter sound. She tries to decapitate the second in unison, but having one foot stuck in the filthy mash of brain matter like congealed applesauce has her off balance. The power behind the blade falters.It gets stuck in the damned thing’s throat halfway through. Its head cocks off to the side instead of flying from its shoulders, sludge pouring from the fleshy flaps of its ruined throat as its lipless mouth stretches wide.
Relationships: Beth Cassidy/Addy Hanlon, Beth Cassidy/Colette French, Colette French/Addy Hanlon, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 25
Kudos: 31





	run faster than

**Author's Note:**

> It was inevitable that I was gonna do a Zombie Apocalypse AU, really. Whose Dead Dove streak is broken?? 
> 
> Not mine, apparently. I tried, I really did, but I just can't stay away from all that is grim and gruesome. What can I say, I'm a grotesque girlie with vomit in her veins. Not to say that I've abandoned my more pleasant WIPs. I haven't done that, at all. I'm just not popping 'em out the way I'd hoped to. 
> 
> Some of these tags are not as like, straightforward as they seem, and potentially just Addy's perception of things. I mean, that's a given in anything I write from her perspective, but it's especially pronounced in this particular fic. So there's that. But still please heed all tags anyway, as the following content may be very uncomfortable. This fic is probably actually my deadest dead dove for this fandom thus far.
> 
> Easter eggs, Easter eggs all over.

**387 Days After Outbreak**

“They’re here!”

Addy jolts awake. 

“They’re here!” Beth hollers and Addy’s already moving, scrambling for her mother’s gun. “Get a move on! Hurry up, it’s a horde!” 

Coach is already on her feet, reflexes like an alley cat, eyes wild as she spins away from the window, where two stories below, a swatch of dark shapes lumber toward their stronghold. “Christ! How the hell did a horde get this close?” 

“Your drunk ass boyfriend’s fucking fault,” Beth’s snarls, whipping the machete out of its sheath and charging down the hall. 

Addy normally hates it when Beth antagonizes Coach because it’s exhausting and counterproductive, but this time, Addy fumes right along with her. It was Will’s turn to keep watch, but apparently instead of watching, he just got wasted. Again. 

Of course he did, there’s no way they would’ve gotten this close otherwise. He probably even passed out, didn’t notice a thing until they were right up on the house. Well, he’s sure as hell up now, Addy can hear him cursing his lungs out in between gunshots. 

She hurries after Beth into the hallway and fuck, fuck everything, there are already zombies inside. The fetid reek of decay suffuses Addy’s senses, so strong it must burn the hair right out of her nostrils. She hasn’t been this close to undead in weeks and the distance was something she’d hoped to maintain. Damn it. Damn stupid, fucking Will. 

Beth tears her way downstairs, machete swinging. One of the two trying to climb up grabs at her ankle and she rapidly jerks her foot out of reach, smashing her boot down on the back of its rotten head. Its teeth clack loudly against the hardwood beneath a much wetter sound. She tries to decapitate the second in unison, but having one foot stuck in the filthy mash of brain matter like congealed applesauce has her off balance. The power behind the blade falters. 

It gets stuck in the damned thing’s throat halfway through. Its head cocks off to the side instead of flying from its shoulders, sludge pouring from the fleshy flaps of its ruined throat as its lipless mouth stretches wide. The partial decapitation does nothing to stop the undead. Its hideous groan carries up the stairs as it snaps for Beth and Addy quickly squeezes the trigger. 

Its head explodes like a water balloon, chunks of meat and sludge gushing in a geyser as the rest of it slumps against the wall. Beth gasps as she’s sprayed. 

“Sorry!” Addy whispers harshly. 

“It’s fine.” Beth grips the banister for support as she jerks her boot free of the first undead’s brains glistening wetly under the pale filter of moonlight. She carefully but quickly shuffles down the rest of the way, slowly turning her head one way and then the next as she scans with her eyes. 

Addy can hear Coach behind her, her light steps trotting over the floor. 

“Are there any more down there?” she asks at the same time Addy asks, “Where’s Slocum?” 

Micheal shouts for Will outside as if on cue, but the first question remains unanswered. Addy creeps down the steps the rest of the way, flanking Beth. Coach follows close behind. 

“Even if there aren’t any more in here, we need to find wherever those got in,” Coach murmurs into the night. “There’s a breach somewhere.” 

Addy nods while Beth swallows beside her, resigned. 

“I’ll cover the kitchen,” Beth mutters, flicking the sludge off her weapon and veering in that direction. 

“I’ll get the basement,” Coach decides. “Addy, you check the living room.” 

Addy nods, watches Coach as she steps away and slinks quietly into the living room. Silver spools of moonlight filter in through the cracks in the boarded up windows. It’s the only light she has to go by as she studies the outlines of furniture in the dark. As she peers critically at every shape, searching for one that doesn’t belong. One that moves. Listening for unearthly groans or the telltale drag of an undead step. 

Corrects herself when she realizes she’s listening for the wrong sound. Only the badly decayed ones drag during the night. For reasons no one understands, the zombies are livelier at night, faster, more alert, more dangerous. During the daylight hours, they’re less animated, move more slowly. Never benign regardless of day or night, but somewhat less threatening while the sun shines. Somewhat. 

Addy jolts as the front door flies open, Micheal hurrying over the threshold, his shovel readied like a sword. 

“Is everyone okay?” he asks, panting heavily. 

“So far so good,” Addy answers. “But two got in, we have to find where—“ 

A crash from the kitchen silences her. An unholy shriek shatters everything. 

Addy barrels toward the screaming of her name, already sick to her stomach because this is a kind of scream she doesn’t recognize from Beth at all, eggshell fragile and fishhook deep. This is a scream of all the worst things and Addy charges over the tile with the gun aimed, not at all shocked to see another zombie, but shocked to see it’s already fallen at Beth’s feet, machete buried in its skull.

If it’s inanimate, there shouldn’t be any reason for Beth to be afraid, only she is, she’s— she’s gaping at Addy with naked terror stark in her too wide eyes, holding her hand out before her as if it isn’t her hand at all, but a slimy tentacle at the end of her wrist. 

Micheal realizes what’s happened before Addy does. Perhaps because she doesn’t want to realize, she doesn’t want to see what she is seeing, doesn’t want to grasp the gravity of the torn skin of Beth’s hand, the impression of teeth marks unmistakable even with only the moonlight to go by. 

“You’re bit,” he chokes out, hollow, horrified. 

“Addy,” Beth repeats like a prayer, breath hitching. “Addy!”

Addy drops the gun on the table and darts forward, wrenching the machete from the corpse’s head. It comes free with a give like weathered wood. 

“Get on the floor, Beth,” she demands, hands trembling as she uses her shirt to clean the sludge off the blade. “Slocum, take your belt off.” 

“No way! You don’t know what you’re doing! I’m— I’m getting Will!” 

“Fuck Will!” Addy snaps back, heart pounding like a jackhammer as Beth lowers herself to floor, eyes still on Addy, eyes never, ever leaving Addy. “We don’t have time!” 

Slocum swears in dissent, but he starts fumbling with his belt as Addy vigorously wipes off every speck of sludge. She drops heavily on the linoleum beside Beth’s quivering form. Saliva gathers in her mouth as nausea pummels her stomach, but she can’t dwell on that as Beth’s eyes beg her for salvation. 

Slocum crashes to his knees and loops his belt around Beth’s upper arm, cinching it tight as Addy adjusts her grip on the machete. 

“You won’t turn,” she promises shakily, raising it high above her head. “I won’t let you turn!” 

If she stops to think about everything that could go wrong, she won’t be able to do this, and there is no time to think anyway. No time at all, they can’t let the infection take root. Addy brings down the blade. It shears through the muscle and gets buried about halfway through the bone with this grisly crack.

A guttural scream wrings itself from Beth’s larynx as her hips buck skyward, body arched in a perfect bow parallel to the floor. Blood wells up around the blade’s intrusion and pools beneath her arm, so much, so fast despite the makeshift tourniquet in place. It looks purple in the dark and it’s soaking past Addy’s jeans, and Beth is screaming again, wretched slaughterhouse screams rattling the walls as Addy struggles to dislodge the blade from the bone. 

Beth’s bones aren’t like the zombies’ bones. The undead’s bones are brittle with decay, cradled by carrion meat no challenge to cut through. Beth is alive, her bones are strong and calcium rich, her muscles are whipcord, her flesh is healthy and whole. 

“Slocum, hold her down!” 

Addy doesn’t recognize her voice. Michael obeys anyway and Beth thrashes under him. She is still screaming, the pained pitches washing over Addy like acid rain. Finally, finally, she manages to free the machete. The violet puddle spreads into a pond and Addy raises it for a second time, choking back the smell of copper. 

She brings it down, shredding the clinging tendons and sinews. It chops through a bit more of the bone but it still doesn’t go all the way through, so Addy begins to saw. She works the blade back and forth. It scrapes. It scrapes horribly and Beth's screams soar above the scraping, but they’re growing tired. Resigned. 

“Almost done,” Addy swears. 

_Don’t die,_ she thinks but can’t bring herself to beg aloud. _Don’t you dare die on me._

“What’s happening?” Coach calls, suddenly somewhere but Addy doesn’t look up. Can’t look up, can’t look away, has to focus on sundering the stubborn bones in Beth’s arm before the infection can claim her. 

“Beth got bit,” Michael explains, hushed with the horror of it all, still trying to hold her down by the shoulders. 

More bones shift, splintering and separating under the press of the blade as sweat trickles down Addy’s face. She feels it slither around her nostrils as she keeps going, putting every ounce of strength she owns behind her ministrations. She thinks Beth will never stop screaming. 

Addy knows it’s finished when the blade greets the linoleum. Beth’s screaming whittles down to a wan whimper as her eyelids flutter, a bloody gap of floor separating her upper arm from the portion severed just below the elbow. Her lips wobble around these feeble noises unlike any kind of noises Addy has ever heard from Beth before, chest rising and falling with shallow breaths. 

Coach is suddenly beside her, kneeling in the thick pond of blood as she pulls off her shirt. 

“Cassidy,” she barks, wrapping her shirt around the ragged stump of meat below Michael’s belt. “You still with us?” 

Beth tries to lift her head and can’t, spends a moment just wheezing. 

“C’mon, Cassidy,” Coach urges again as the makeshift bandage soaks. 

“If I could…feel the hand I have left…” Beth mumbles, “I’d flip you off…s’your fucking boyfriend’s fault.” 

Coach seizes Addy’s shirt at the hem, yanking it up. Addy automatically lifts her arms, allows her to wrest it off. She bundles it around the first shirt, wadding the fabric around Beth’s ghastly amputation. 

“Slocum, get the first aid kit,” she demands. 

He gives a quick nod and hurries off. Addy swallows and shifts to sit with her legs crossed, knees sliding through hot, sticky slickness. She wraps gentle arms around Beth and pulls her into her lap as much as she can, cradling her head against her chest. Placing a ginger kiss to the clammy skin of her temple. 

“She won’t turn,” Addy whispers fervently, unsure if she’s trying to convince Coach or herself. “She won’t turn. We cut it off before the infection could set in.” 

“I’m not worried about that,” Coach says, decisive, glancing down to the dismembered half of Beth’s arm. Bone protruding from the sodden mess of hastily shorn meat, fingers curved into her palm. The cursed bite marks in her skin, ringed by bloody smears. 

A small shiver ripples through Beth’s frame. Addy clutches her tighter. 

“Can you grab her a blanket, Coach?” 

Coach nods and gets to her feet, briskly shuffling through the door. Her fleet steps land with a tacky echo and Addy doesn’t want to think about why. 

“Addy?” Beth pules tiredly.

“Yeah?” 

“Where’s your hamsa?” 

“On my wrist, Beth,” Addy lies, nuzzling against her cheek as she feels herself deflate. “Like it always is.” 

**116 Days After Outbreak**

The funny thing about the apocalypse, is that it could be as boring as it could be terrifying. 

Addy thought Sutton Grove was boring before the end of the world. Now, she doesn’t think she ever understood what boring really was. If they aren’t running for their lives, killing zombies, or looking for supplies, there is nothing. Nothing is everywhere, here in the residue of their ruined world. 

Today they have enough supplies. The noisemakers and the traps are secure. Their rudimentary alarm system of aluminum cans and empty bottles on nautical rope, strung across areas the zombies would be apt to approach from. 

“I don’t know,” Addy hums, watching an ant drag a dead earthworm over twice its side. “Maybe bat shit.” 

Michael snorts. 

“I’m serious,” Addy says, plucking a clover and flinging it at his face. “Bat shit is like, top tier shit. There’s even some fancy name for it, I just don’t remember what it is.” 

“I don’t think so. I think you’re confusing it with whale shit, which is what I’d be,” he decides, brushing the clover off his face. “They call that ambergris.” 

“Is that whale shit or whale jizz?” Addy wrinkles her nose. 

“It’s whale shit. Sperm whale shit.” Micheal lips twitch up in a smirk. “That’s probably why you’re thinking of jizz.” 

“Huh…” 

The ant Addy’s been watching finally drags the earthworm to the anthill. It won’t fit through the hole. 

The door swings open and there’s Beth, wearing her sunglasses even through they’re broken, machete sheathed over her thigh. 

“Hey, Beth,” Micheal picks a dandelion and waggles it her way. “If you were a piece of shit, what kind of shit would you be?” 

“You want me to kick your ass, Slocum?” 

“Beth, it’s a just a game.” Addy rolls her eyes. “I picked bat shit. Slocum picked whale shit.” 

“The fuck kind of game is that?” Beth huffs, somewhere between amused and annoyed. 

“Just passing the time, I guess.” Micheal shrugs. 

The worm won’t fit in the anthill. But the other ants are coming out, swarming over it. 

Beth plops down in the grass next to Addy. “I don’t think I’d want to be a piece of shit at all.” 

“That’s a copout,” Addy says, nudging her with an elbow. “And copping out isn’t how we play.” 

“This isn’t a real game,” Beth insists, but they’re both staring at her and she caves, clucking her tongue. “Fine. If I had to be shit, I’d be dog shit.” 

“Wait, why dog shit?” Addy wrinkles her nose, recalling the first time she’d stepped in it. 

“This weird movie Bert got me when I was a kid,” Beth says. “Shit you not, it was about a pile of dog poop trying to find its purpose in life.” 

“Wait, I vaguely remember this…” Addy mumbles, something distant stirring in the recesses of her mind. 

“Maybe we watched it together at some point.” Beth shrugs and idly traces her fingers along the sheath of her weapon. 

“So what happens?” Micheal asks, blinking. “Does the dog poop find a purpose?”

“Only in death,” Beth grunts. “Dog poop befriends this plant that sprouts up. One day it rains, and the rain melts the dog poop while it’s hugging the plant. The plant gets fertilized, so it grows and blooms into a flower, and the dog poop is like, at peace knowing the flower would thrive through its sacrifice.” 

“Wow…that’s pretty deep for a movie about dog shit,” Micheal murmurs, mildly impressed. 

Beth scarcely ever smiles for real these days but at this, she does, one corner of her mouth twitching up in a ghost of her former goblin grin. A tiny warmth flickers in Addy’s chest like the spark of a matchstick. She commits the image of Beth’s lips to memory because it very well might be the last time she catches an almost smile. When she blinks, it’s gone, and so she turns her attention back to the ants. 

They’re feasting upon the earthworm now, coating it almost entirely, beady black bodies shining in the sun. 

At some point Coach comes out of the house with Caitlin on her hip. Addy glances over and calls, 

“Coach! What’s the fancy name for bat shit again?” 

Coach pauses. She sets Caitlin down and the child goes toddling across the grass, chasing a dragonfly. 

“Guano,” she answers after a heartbeat. “Why?” 

**388 Days After Outbreak**

Will begs for forgiveness that isn’t forthcoming from anyone, down on his knees, dirt under his fingernails. 

Apologies aren’t going to grant Beth the gift to regrow her arm like a lizard regrows its tail. Beth doesn’t even acknowledge him, doesn’t acknowledge anyone today, too weak to come outside. 

“You are the most pathetic piece of shit I’ve ever seen,” Addy tells him when he turns to her, words Coach flung at him the first time this happened. 

The first time, it had been Caitlin who paid the price. Only Caitlin was too small to chop anything off of, there was no salvaging Caitlin once the ghoul sank its teeth into her chubby little leg. 

Addy can still hear her petrified squall sometimes, the last sound that ever sprung from her tiny lungs when that maw clenched tight and tore off a fillet of doughy toddler flesh. 

For all Beth could call him Coach’s boyfriend, she actually hasn’t allowed Will to touch her since. This, Addy knows. Addy almost misses watching. 

Even Micheal won’t look at Will today, and that says it all, considering he’s the first one to cut the guy some slack. The only one who might tenderly pry a bottle from his fingers instead of spitting a curse. The one who might even wipe the puke off Will’s mouth or discreetly lead him off to bathe when it starts to smell like whiskey’s sweating from his pores. 

They all stink. It’s the end of the world, anyone who remains fucking stinks. But there’s something particularly potent about Will’s stink, and today Addy doesn’t even have the stomach to try to tolerate it. 

She doesn’t have the stomach to face Beth either. Not after what she did, cleaving her best friend’s arm from her body like a butcher hacking off pigs’ feet. She’d only done it to save her, of course, but motive doesn’t change the act itself. How violent it was, the pain it brought, the indescribable agony that consumed Beth’s face as she writhed against it. Her tortured screams that razed the room as Addy sawed back and forth, back and forth, for what must’ve felt like eternity. 

Coach is not one for coddling but today she finds Addy, knees pulled to her chest inside the closet, and drops down beside her. She wraps an arm around her shoulders.

“Do you want to talk about it?” 

“What’s there to talk about?” Addy sighs. “She’s going to hate me more than she already does.” 

Coach gives her a noncomprehending look. “What do you mean?” 

“Beth never wanted to stick with you guys. She always wanted it to be just the two of us, she’s only stayed this long for me. And now I cut her fucking arm off. I— I took something from her, Coach.” 

Coach stares at her intently, lips thinning as she frowns. 

“I took something from her, I could hear it in her screams. I can feel it, but I can’t…” Addy squeezes her eyes shut, trying to block out the images of Beth’s bleach white bones glaring up, nestled in profusely bleeding pulp. “I won’t look at it.” 

“Addy…” Coach trails off and pulls her into an embrace that holds anything but comfort. 

**390 Days After Outbreak**

Beth is going to recover, of this Addy has no doubt. Beth is a hurricane in human skin, the most formidable force Addy knows. Her body is ox strong and elastic flexible, dexterous as a ballet dancer. Physically, she’s going to come back like a boomerang. 

Physically, Beth is going to be fine, but things aren’t ever going to be the same. 

Addy did something they can never go back from. She’s done many things and Beth has too, all kinds of things to fracture the bond between them they’ve fostered since blocks and diapers and jumbo crayons. But this something else entirely, this is a personal loss, an intimate violence, and— 

And things will never be the same again. 

**39 Days After Outbreak**

“I know you hate her, Beth, but we’re all safer together than we’d be by ourselves,” Addy points out.

“Safer together, my ass,” Beth grunts. “You and me need to take off. Turn your back on Colette for two seconds and bam, you’re her human shield as soon as the zombies show.” 

“She wouldn’t.” Addy crosses her arms. “She’d never.” 

“Oh, you say that now.” Beth plants a hand on her hip. “I’m telling you, we need to get out of here. Just the two of us.” 

“Slocum’s been a family friend since second grade,” Addy points out. “I can’t leave him.” 

“Slocum, sure,” Beth says, shrugging indifferently. “I could deal with Slocum if he’d quit drooling over Sargent Shitfaced. If you can convince him to hop off Sarge’s dick, then he’s free to join us.” 

“Wait, Beth, he’s not…they’re not…” 

Beth skeptically raises a brow. 

Addy chews her lip. It’s not something she’s ever admitted, but she wonders sometimes. Some days Micheal and Will take off for hours and Coach just waves a hand or rolls her eyes, says something about them needing their male bonding time, or whatever. Other times, she catches Micheal curled up in the crook of Will’s arm, snoozing with his head against his chest. Notices the playful way Will tugs Michael back by his belt loops sometimes, and how Michael’s bashful smile just might reflect the things she feels when Coach does the same to her. 

“They’re friends,” Addy says. “Sarge gives him stability and it’s not like there’s a lot of that left in the world. So, no, he wouldn’t leave him to go anywhere with us. But I don’t want to go anywhere anyway. Beth, seriously, we’re safer here. There’s safety in numbers. We have weapons here, we have food, we have a stronghold. We’re doing okay!” 

“It’s the end of the fucking world, Addy!” Beth gestures widely. “Nothing is okay!”

“Beth!” Addy lurches forward and grabs her hands, swallows as she twists their fingers together. “I know these aren’t the people you want—“ 

“Got that damn right!” 

“—but they’re the people we have. There is no one else left in Sutton Grove!” 

“You always wanted to move on from Sutton Grove. What happened to that?” 

“There’s nowhere left to move on to.” A lump rises in Addy’s throat. “Nowhere that’s better, not anymore. It’s…it’s like you said, Beth. It’s the end of the world. They aren’t the people you want, but they’re on our side and we’re safer for it. I’m here, why can’t that be enough for you? Why does it matter if she’s here too?” 

“Because I don’t trust her, Addy. I don’t trust either of them.” Beth looks down to their hands. “Colette’s a two-faced viper and Will’s a drunk with a gun. We’re not safe here at all. I wish you could see that.” 

“We wouldn’t be safe anywhere,” Addy sighs, slipping her fingers free and running them back over her hair. “There’s no such thing anymore. I can’t stop you from leaving, Beth, but I won’t go with you.” 

They both know that means Beth isn’t going anywhere. But it’s something that remains unsaid. Beth’s jaw tightens, then loosens, and when she turns away, Addy can imagine the look on her face. But she doesn’t want to, and so she turns away too. 

**410 Days After Outbreak**

Addy is sure they’re the only ones truly alive in Sutton Grove. 

Anyone with the money to leave left pretty early on, off to the safe haven stations and compounds on the coast. Anyone who took it seriously, anyway. Bert didn’t. Kept telling Beth and Addy that the zombies were nothing more than an elaborate hoax. Fake news. Some crazy internet fad gone too far.

Beth would probably be somewhere else if he’d been smarter, somewhere safe and calm. Maybe not though, maybe she would’ve flipped him off and stayed behind with Addy anyway. Or maybe Bert wouldn’t have given her a choice, and maybe that would’ve been better. 

JJ Curtis took it seriously. Addy remembers when she’d said goodbye to RiRi before her flight. Hugging her close, holding her longer than Beth probably appreciated, inhaling the cherry-almond scent of her body lotion. Tears sliding from her seal brown eyes like liquid pearls. When RiRi scurried off to the car, the breeze lifted her skirt flap and Addy got a nice peek at the panties beneath, baby pink with a bright green frog graphic that had glittering dollar signs in its eyes above the caption, ’Shop to it!’ in a cutesy font. 

Addy wonders where she is now. If they’d successfully made it to one of the safe havens or compounds. If they didn’t, if RiRi’s been dead for months, maybe. If she’s joined the plague of carnivorous cadavers and mindlessly chases after fresh flesh while her own rots off her bones. 

Addy hasn’t seen another living person besides the five of them in…well…she doesn’t even remember. 

She doesn’t know if that’s good or bad. Sometimes it seems like it might be a good thing. The less people there are alive, the less to be bitten and become new dangers. No one else alive means no competition when they go out on their supply runs. No one else who might try to raid their stronghold. 

Sometimes it’s just depressing, this gut deep feeling that there are only four living people she’s ever going to speak to. That there will never be anyone else in her life beyond Beth, Coach, Slocum, and Will. That this is her only pool of people to go to, to talk to, to fight with, to fight for, to— 

Well, anything, really. 

Sometimes she wonders if she should’ve just let her mom bite her. If she should have put down that wrought iron skillet instead of smashing Faith Hanlon’s brains in, simultaneously smashing something inside herself with every strike, every thick, hot blood splatter. If she should’ve allowed her mom’s teeth to pierce her throat and joined the legion of the undead. 

They don’t seem to feel pain. They don’t seem to think, really. There’s some kind of instinct in them. There is some kind of method to the way they hunt. They cluster together naturally. But none of that is quite thinking exactly, not cognitively. Addy is pretty sure they don’t do that. 

She supposes it’d be kinda nice not to think. Not to know the horrible things that bury themselves deep in her mind, so as not to unhinge her at the forefront. Not to dread every day the moment her eyes open. Not to be the person who broke whatever love was left between herself and her best friend the moment the last thread of sinew snapped between the halves of Beth’s gushing arm. 

**201 Days After Outbreak**

Micheal and Will are off again doing whatever it is they do, when they leave for hours and don’t come back with much supplies to speak of. Coach is cooking a can of beans over the fire in the backyard. Beth is trying to read a book but Caitlin won’t let her. 

Addy watches, amused as Caitlin tugs on Beth’s sweatpants, tries to climb up her shin. 

“Shoo.” Beth doesn’t kick her— wouldn’t kick her, no matter how displeased she is, nose scrunched up and lip curled back in the beginning of bared teeth— she doesn’t kick, but does vehemently wiggle her leg, trying to shake her off. 

Caitlin chortles as if it’s a game, holding tight. 

“Shooooo,” Beth repeats, drawling as her eyes narrow, flapping the book in her hand. 

Caitlin laughs some more, the happy sounds burbling up her throat as sweet as puffs of powdered sugar in the air. 

“Just let her on your lap, Beth,” Addy says, curling her fingers into the rug. 

“No. I don’t need Colette’s spawn getting her spit and sticky hands all over the last nice shirt I have left,” grumbles Beth. 

But Caitlin doesn’t quit and eventually Beth caves, letting her climb up. She plays with Beth’s bracelets for awhile, tugging at the jelly ones and rolling the beaded ones with tiny fingertips. Beth reads around her and Addy finds herself bizarrely content, fully present in this one moment of pleasant simplicity, here in their corner at the end of the world. A brief respite where they reside in the place that exists after the sidewalk ends and the dead roam to devour the living. 

Addy watches Caitlin doze off in Beth’s lap while Beth reads with a pinched mouth, listens to the soft brush of parchment when Beth turns the page, rubs the cushy rug beneath her calloused palms, inhales the scent of cooking beans that waft in through the partially open door. Nothing is happening, really, but she almost wants to cry, aching for something she doesn’t understand. She should be tired of this, all this nothingness, most of the time she is, but—

“Addy.” Beth looks at her over the book.

“Nothing,” Addy answers an unspoken question. “It’s nothing.” 

And it really is, isn’t it? 

**425 Days After Outbreak**

Addy flanks Coach as they scavenge the Mallmart for supplies. Coming here isn’t as dangerous as it used to be. 

It was a long, hot summer and without air conditioning, the store was like a slow cooker. Increasing the rate of decay among the undead trapped inside, making them less dangerous. The worse shape they’re in, the easier they are to take down. Their parts are softer, squishier. Their brains expel more easily from the skulls totally necrotic. 

The downside is that the stench is unlike anything else. They’re all familiar with the odor of death by now. They taste it every morning in the first breaths they take, they inhale it the way one would greet an old friend. But there is no ventilation in the Mallmart and the corpses are just piled atop one another, melted into putrid puddles. 

The strength of the stench is overpowering, it burns their eyes like mace and coats the back of Addy’s throat with a revolting, fiendish flavor she can’t cough out. 

Maggots wriggle around in the moist membranes, in the caverns of cadavers’ lacerations, a gorge of sickly green mash between the festering lips of fetid flesh, the rancid bowels spilling from their bellies in thick, slimy ropes. Even now, some of these damned things are still moving. The ones that can’t stand, let alone pursue, still grab with dead fingers and snap with dead jaws as Addy and Coach maneuver their way around. 

They watch these ones carefully, just in case, mindful of where they walk so that they can step out of the way if and when need be. Addy doesn’t waste bullets on undead in this state. They only have so much ammo. She needs to make sure every shot counts and that she saves those shots for when they’re absolutely necessary. 

She primarily relies on her baseball bat that wasn’t really hers to begin with, but became hers when they chose the empty house on Elm Street to be their stronghold. Well, it hadn’t been empty then, exactly. But there had been nothing living inside it. Only a couple things animating, and between the five of them, it hadn’t taken too long to stop all that. 

“Should we split up?” Addy asks, selecting a shopping cart and deftly veering around a grimy hand that grabs for her shoe. 

Coach hums in thought, then shakes her head. “No. We should stay together just in case. I don’t think there are many able ones left in here, but you never know.” 

“You’re right,” Addy agrees, bobbing her head. “These things find new ways to surprise me every day.” 

A bitter smile pulls Coach’s lips taut. “They certainly do.” 

One of the only upright ghouls they encounter used to be an employee. Its wearing a Mallmart uniform and a name tag that reads, ‘Gwen.’ When Addy smashes the bat to its face, lumpy wine dark clots flutter free like confetti. There’s a nauseating thunk that Addy’s long since grown used to as the corpse drops to the floor and she gives it another good whack to make sure it stays down, skull crunching as it gives way. 

Another upright ghoul is only barely so, hobbling on two broken legs, more skeleton than anything, what’s left of its meat clinging on by only stinking shreds. They don’t even bother to expend energy killing that one. It is no threat. Coach just pins it to the brick with another stray shopping cart and they carry on their way. 

Their selection is meager as far as food goes, some of the cans have to be discarded as they’re dented and no one can afford a bad case of botulism. They take a couple comforters from the bed and bath aisles, because the days are getting shorter and the first frost of autumn will be here before they know it, even if it still feels pretty warm out right now. They fail to find any toilet paper. That was the first thing to sell out when the populace began to take the zombie rumors semi-seriously. Oh well. 

Not like there are working toilets anymore anyway. 

They’re lucky not to run into any undead on the way home and today is a day that’s pleasantly balmy, so they all end up going to the river. 

They strip down to their crusty underwear and splash around in the water, at first washing, and then playing. Everyone but Beth, that is. She keeps her distance from the rest of them. Remains on the land, bandaged stump tucked tight to her body. It’s healing well, all things considered, but Addy can only imagine the kind of scar it’ll bear. Skin ravaged like something out of Shark Week. 

Imagining it makes Addy’s insides twist, so she shakes the thought off. 

Micheal climbs on the sarge’s shoulders and challenges her to a game of chicken. It’s the first time Addy’s smiled since the horror of Beth’s amputation, all that blood thick between her fingers. So when Coach goads her on, she happily climbs up her shoulders too. 

Her and Michael start grappling and laughing, oh, Addy’s laugh is foreign to her own ears. Micheal’s eyes are sparkling, and the joy in them is so rare she almost doesn’t recognize it. They grapple and push at each other, Coach firmly gripping her thighs in place. Her hands are almost as high as Addy wants them to be, and she laughs at that too, giddily as she struggles against Micheal. 

He’s got greater weight behind his pushes and Will is a tree trunk solid pillar. But Addy won’t count herself out, she’s as slippery as an eel and Coach plays dirty. They make a good team, a team Addy’s confident in. Anyone could win. 

Anyone but Beth, who watches from the shore, a mask of disinterest deceptively disguising something forlorn. Beth, who cannot grapple at all like this anymore because of what Addy has done, because of the things she must’ve seen in Addy when Addy raised the machete high above her head. 

But Addy can’t look at her, she won’t— 

**272 Days after Outbreak**

Micheal and Will are in charge of supplies today. Hopefully they’ll bring back more necessities than last time. Coach blew up at the crates full of booze lifted from the liquor store from the next town over. It’s not like Coach didn’t want to drink, they all wanted to fucking drink, but Will used up some of the precious little gas they had to go over there, and he should’ve come back with more food than alcohol, for Christ’s sake, three quarters of the truck bed was bourbon.

Them being in charge of supples leaves Addy, Beth, and Coach in charge of checking the alarm system. Going around to the parts of the neighborhood where they’d rigged the cans and bottles, making sure they were still intact or fixing them if they’ve been disturbed.

Everything starts out okay. Beth is snarky with Coach and Coach is curt with her, but they’ve always been like that. It doesn’t stop them from cooperating when push comes to shove. When someone is in danger. When Addy is in danger. 

Addy ignores their little snipes and focuses on the task at hand. It takes them longer than anticipated and that’s where things start to go sideways, because the longer they’re out, the more opportunities those things have to pop up from seemingly nowhere, to startle them like grotesque jack-in-the-boxes. Especially as the day inches toward dusk. Things are always worse after dark, when they’re more lively and more apt to show. 

Sure enough, one shows. Addy doesn’t even notice at first because Beth doesn’t cry out until the thing is nearly upon her. Addy gasps, wheeling away from the noisemaker she was pinning and whipping her bat free from the backpack on her shoulders. She races toward her, shouting her name. 

Beth has her weapon unsheathed but she’s backing away from the devilish thing instead of ending it. Addy is dumbfounded until she sees and realizes. They know this one. This one has five feet of hair sprouting out of its mouldering head, tangled down its oozing, pockmarked back in a princess ponytail. 

_Oh._

Ice floods through Addy as Beth takes a swing and misses, the ghoul swiping out. They aren’t intelligent, these things. But they understand enough to disarm their prey on purpose. 

“Beth!” Addy screeches. 

Coach is faster than she is. Coach appears from around the fence she’d been securing, sledgehammer in her grip. She springs, thrusting with all of her upper body. The steel head strikes the thing that used to be Tacy in the temple with a nasty crack. 

Beth flinches, stumbling back. It’s the first time Addy has ever seen Beth stumble in front of Coach. Coach wrenches the hammer free and thick, viscous sludge sprays fourth in a rancid fountain as the ghoul topples to the pavement. Addy skids to a stop, slowing before she can slip in it. 

Beth gapes down at the ghoul, visibly rattled. It isn’t moving anymore. It’s inanimate now, the direct hit to the temple was a killing blow. Addy stares down at it too, swallowing as a lump forms in her throat. Insects crawl along Tacy’s hairline, skittering across skin as shriveled as an overripe citrus rind. Fragments of skull hem the gaping hole the sledgehammer punched into its head, sluggishly trickling smelly fluid. 

“You can’t hesitate like that,” Coach rebukes, gesturing to the corpse with her hammer. “This thing isn’t your sister. Not anymore.” 

She glowers at Beth with titanium eyes, perspiration gluing stray blonde strands to her face. 

“Cassidy, do you hear me?” her voice sharpens. “It would’ve bitten your face off. You can’t let emotion override you like that.” 

“Fuck you,” Beth huffs, low and petulant, turning around to retrieve her machete. 

* * *

  
Later that night, Addy sits with Beth through her watch. The starlight bathes them from above, absolving them of their sins, maybe. If only for tonight. 

“She never was, really,” Beth murmurs, so soft Addy almost thinks she imagined it. 

“What?” 

“Cuntlette told me Tacy wasn’t my sister anymore. But she never was.” Beth’s laughter grinds out of her like rusty gears, but Addy can hear the hurt in them. “She was nothing to me. Just someone who showed up because Bert’s condom broke, and cost my mom everything. We couldn’t stand each other!”

Addy delicately places a hand between her shoulders. She thinks about where they’ve been and where they are now. Thinks about all the stuff that doesn’t matter anymore because nothing matters anymore really, nothing beyond survival in their brand new world of bedlam and boredom and no in between. 

“I miss her too, Beth,” she whispers.

**444 Days After Outbreak**

They run into another one they recognize. Coach and Addy are loading up the truck with firewood from Lanvers, when a small cluster of them emerge from the slope of the ravine. 

Three. Two very tall. One of the tall ones is a non-threat, as it has no bottom jaw. Can’t bite them with no jaw, its tongue hanging from the red and black mush of its broken mouth like a ribbon of pulled taffy. It trudges along toward their smell on instinct alone. 

The small one between the two tall ones is only about knee height and wearing a familiar daisy sundress. It waves its chubby hands back and forth, tiny maw yawning open with a groan that sounds far too deep to reside in its narrow rib cage. Its face was once cherubic but is now a nightmare to behold, one eye dangling down from the socket on a sinewy stalk. It bounces against the creature’s rotting cheek with every step it toddles forward, awkward steps due to the meat torn out of the calf on its right leg. 

Addy’s heart lurches as decides she to kill the small one. The small one used to be Caitlin and Coach shouldn’t have to go through her own daughter’s death twice. But Addy’s so stricken by the sight of the small one, she doesn’t realize the other tall one has her in its sights. 

It flings itself at Addy, tackling her to the forest floor. She struggles wildly against it as the odor of carrion blasts her in the face. Its innards dangle from its grotesque body, dragging wetly across her torso while it ravenously snaps its jaws. Addy shoves the log she’d been holding up and its teeth blessedly clamp onto that instead of her arm. 

She twists her body and powerfully thrusts upright, knocking the ghoul to the earth. Its head clicks back, maggoty limbs splaying open. Addy leaps to her feet. Adrenaline pistons through her body. The thing spits out the log and lunges just as she frees her bat, sweeping it out in a frazzled arc. She lands only a glancing blow and it readies itself to lunge again. 

Her next strike is more precise, hitting squarely against the fragile part of the creature’s cranium. Its brains punt free, sailing through the air and landing in a wet, solid lump. When it remains still, successfully slain, Addy rushes back to Coach. 

Coach is still swinging the sledgehammer down. She doesn’t have to, Addy is positive. The little ghoul is already downed for good. By the time Addy reaches her side, it doesn’t even have a face left anymore. Just a slippery custard where a face once was, maybe, skull smashed to splinters embedded in the slurry mess of rancid meat. 

“Coach, it’s done,” Addy urges, choking back nausea. 

But Coach carries on on as if she’s never heard her, bringing up the sledgehammer and smashing it down again, over and over. Each blow lands wetter than the last, splashing up more of the loathsome custard. Addy has never seen Coach unleash herself upon an undead so ferociously, roaring like a beast, eyes blazing like wildfire. 

Addy finds herself transfixed, can’t do anything but stare, even as the repugnant reek of rot burrows itself all the way down in her marrow. Coach doesn’t stop until she’d decapitated the damn thing. Until even Addy would never recognize it as once being Caitlin at all, everything from the neck up rendered a ruddy paste as thick and sloshy as the mud puddles they used to play in while Coach was off fooling around. 

“Are you okay?” Addy thinks she asks, hushed with a new kind of fear she isn’t familiar enough yet to realize is fear at all. 

Coach wipes the sludge off her face on the back of her sleeve and wordless hands Addy the truck keys. Coach sobs most of the ride, but by the time they make it home, the tears have dried. Addy won’t tell anyone what happened. 

She thinks, if things were different, she’d tell Beth. She thinks, if she had not taken what she had from Beth, the words would flow from her mouth like a waterfall and she’d be able to find the solace in Beth’s arms that she had, once upon a time when those arms were intact. 

Inside, Will tries to slip an arm around her waist for the first time in awhile. Coach abruptly jerks away. 

“Ruh-roh, Raggy, Sarge Stud’s in the doghouse again,” Beth remarks, her feet up on the back of the couch, hair cascading over the cushions. 

They others ignore her while Addy winces. Coach goes up the stairs. Will slips out to start unloading the wood and Michael joins him. 

“Guess it’s just you and me, lover,” Beth winks at her sarcastically. 

Addy rolls her eyes. “Sit up straight, or all the blood is gonna rush to your head.” 

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Beth deadpans, flipping her the bird. 

Addy wants to say something to her. But she can’t figure out what, so she follows the way Coach went instead. Trots up the steps and peers around the corner, watches her slump tiredly on the bed. 

“What’s up, Addy?” she asks dully. 

Addy pads across the carpet and joins her on the mattress. She tentatively slides her hands over Coach’s thighs and leans in, brushing her lips over her cheek. 

“You’re in pain,” she murmurs. “Let me take it away.” 

Coach blinks at her, gaze like ashes. She accepts the kiss easily enough at first, moves her lips halfheartedly against Addy’s. But when Addy’s hands reach her fly, she stills her by the shoulders and pushes her back. 

“Addy…this isn’t happening.” 

Addy balks, chest squeezing in confusion. 

“What? Why not?” 

“We just can’t, that’s all.” Coach shakes her head. 

“It’s…it’s not Will?” 

“Of course it’s not Will,” Coach huffs, agitated. 

“Then, t-then what?” Addy splutters, at a loss. “It’s not the age thing, right? There’s…fuck, Coach, laws don’t exist anymore and I might— I could be eighteen now, for all we know.” 

“I just don’t see you that way, Addy.” 

Addy jolts as if she’s been slapped, bewildered. 

“You’re lying,” she manages to scoff out. “I feel your eyes on me all the time. Every time I move, following me, wanting me. And I wanted to be yours, I still want to be yours. Coach, you don’t have to hold back.” 

“Oh, Addy,” Coach sighs through her nose, shaking her head. “You’re really confused these days. How about you go help the guys out, huh?” 

Addy freezes. 

“I could use a minute to myself.” She inclines her head pointedly toward the door. 

The rejection is gutting, but Addy won’t let herself fall apart here. She covers her mouth with her hand and ducks from the room, furiously blinking back mist. 

**447 Days After Outbreak**

“Do you want to eat with us?” Addy asks carefully. 

“No.” 

“But I haven’t seen you eat all day, Beth.” 

“I’ve eaten, trust me.” Beth rolls her eyes and goes back to her book. 

“But we’re gonna have s’mores after,” Addy coaxes. “Slocum found a bag of marshmallows at the gas station. He worked hard for them too, had to fight off like three biters.” 

“Addy.” Beth puts her book down and fixes her with a cool glare. “I’m not like you. I don’t live in fantasy land. I’m not going to turn my brain off and pretend we’re all some happy family on a camping trip.”

“Fine.” Addy bristles. “Whatever, stay cooped up here. I’m tired of being the bad guy for trying to make the best of a bad situation.” 

“Don’t break your teeth on the marshmallows,” Beth drily calls after her as she whirls around. “Bet you my other arm they’re as hard as rocks.” 

Addy’s gut lurches but she doesn’t turn back. She trots down the stairs and joins the others outside, popping a squat between Coach and Michael. 

“What took you so long?” Coach asks, blowing the flames off the charred marshmallow on her stick. 

“Wasting my breath trying to get Beth to join us,” Addy mutters. “Surprise, surprise, she shot me down. Again.” 

No one says anything. They stare at Addy with sympathetic smiles that make her ill, and when Michael hands her a marshmallow on a stick, she doesn’t really have an appetite anymore anyway. 

**456 Days After Outbreak**

“You need to save your bullets,” Will slurs. “We can’t exactly get more ammo once it runs out.” 

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know,” Addy snaps, nerves fried. 

“No? Then why’d you shoot?” He nods down to the zombie with the smoking hole in the center of its forehead, flesh singed around the edges. 

“Because it was too fast for the bat.” 

“Bull.” 

“Fuck off,” Addy warns, sliding her mother’s gun back into the holster. 

“Hey—“ 

“Don’t ‘hey’ me! If it wasn’t for Slocum, I would’ve let it bite you!” Addy snarls, even if that’s not quite true. 

She’d never sacrifice anyone to the horror of the undead, but Will doesn’t need to know that, where all her soft spots are. No one needs to know where those are. 

Shock flickers in his eyes. 

“Addy…” he starts, floundering, and she doesn’t care because she doesn’t want to hear it. 

“You’re fucking sloppy, Mosley,” she spits, thinking of Caitlin and Beth, the dried puke on Micheal’s shoes, and Coach’s legs straddling his waist, her polished fingernails fanned over the laurus nobilis inked into his skin. “I don’t need to take shit from you.” 

**472 Days After Outbreak**

Addy can’t sleep. It’s Will’s turn to watch and Michael is out there with him to make sure he actually watches this time. Make sure he doesn’t drink himself into another senseless stupor. She knows where they are, but she doesn’t know where Coach is. Or where Beth is. 

She wanders around, restless, finds herself at the bottom of the stairs. Then at the basement door. There’s a dim glow under the threshold. Addy realizes she smells kerosene. She quietly opens the door and creeps down the steps. 

About halfway down, she hears it. Hears them. 

Thick, ratty panting. Moans like velour but wrought with something urgent, something provoked. The rustle of skin over skin, the smack of lips and something slick, something carnal. Addy crouches low on the steps and crawls like a crab the rest of the way. 

There’s Coach and Beth in the middle of a comforter spread over the floor, naked. One kerosene lamp illuminates the scene, their silhouettes outlined by the warm glow of firelight. Beth lies on her back, grasping at the cover with her only hand while one of Coach’s squeezes her throat. Coach’s other hand fists between her open legs, Beth’s hips rocking with the force of it.

Coach doesn’t notice Addy but Beth does. Beth catches her watching and grins, bearing her teeth in a ruthless rictus. Addy feels the deepest betrayal impale her chest and realizes that Beth was waiting for this moment. She winks at Addy and rocks her hips harder against the pumping of Coach’s fist, arches her back like the curve of a half-moon. 

Addy meets Beth’s gaze. Watches Coach’s grip tighten on her neck, realizes the bruises will claim her for days, decorating Beth’s throat like rose petals. Part of her wants to turn around and run back upstairs right now, run away from all that’s happening. Part of her wants to barrel forward and tear them apart. What she actually does, is slip her hand under the waistband of her flannel bottoms. 

There’s devastation in her stomach but dampness in her panties, and she fucks herself to their fucking with a maelstrom of conflicting emotions clashing inside. In this moment, Addy hates the both of them so much, it brings her blood to a boiling point. But she can’t look away from them either, because they are beautiful, they’re so utterly fucking beautiful, she has never ever witnessed something as magnificently bewitching as this.

**480 Days After Outbreak**

Sometimes Addy hears Will and Coach talk about Beth at night, when they think she can’t hear. 

“She’s insane,” Will’s saying tonight. “Bat shit insane.” 

“No, she’s traumatized.” 

“We’ll all traumatized, but we don’t—“ 

“You’re practically kicking back kegs everyday,” Coach growls, fed up now. “You don’t get to criticize her. You don’t get to criticize anyone.” 

As angry as Addy is at Beth, at the both of them, she’s glad Coach is sticking up for her. Beth isn’t even bat shit. A major bitch, yeah, but not bat shit. She certainly hasn’t put them in danger the way he has, and it’s in no small part his fault that Beth’s become as uncooperative as she has. And some things she just isn’t physically capable of doing anymore, because of what Addy has done. 

Addy hasn’t spoken to Beth since the night she saw them fuck. Hasn’t spoken to Coach either. But it’s the end of the world and they all need to take care of each other, no matter how pissed off she is. She would never condone running them off, or leaving them to the mercy of the chomping, undead jaws.

It’s like cheer, like being on a squad. You have to support your squad. Everyone in your squad. That’s how you succeed. 

**473 Days After Outbreak**

  
  
“What are you moping about?” Micheal asks. 

“It’s the apocalypse, Slocum. Who needs a reason to mope?” 

He sits next to Addy and lightly bumps her shoulder. “It’s different today. I can tell.” 

“It’s just something I saw last night,” Addy admits, releasing a melancholic sigh. “Something Coach and Beth were doing. Something I’m sure Beth made Coach do because she still fucking hates me.” 

Addy furiously tears up the grass under her hands. 

Surprise flashes across Slocum’s face and Addy shakes her head. 

“It’s stupid.” 

Because it is and she’s enraged at both of them. Beth for fucking Coach only to taunt Addy, only to throw it in her face that she took something Addy wanted first. Coach for choosing Beth over her. The both of them for excluding her, rejecting her. She can’t imagine anything more rapturous than being sandwiched between them. Than a tangle of limbs, pleasing one while she’s being pleased by the other. Lips and touches all over. 

“Addy…what do you think happened to Beth?” 

Even Michael’s noticed she’s different. Then, Addy supposes it’d be difficult not to. Beth was always here for her alone, that was true, but she and Michael used to get on well enough as long as he wasn’t doing anything in particular to annoy her. And while Beth always despised Coach and never cared for Will, she became virulently more caustic toward them after that night. Far more avoidant with all of them, even Addy herself.

“I was trying to save her, I just…she would’ve turned. I couldn’t let her turn, I couldn’t let her die…” 

He puts a hand over hers, but Addy pulls away and shreds more grass under her fingernails, scratching insistently like a cat upon a wooden post. 

“But I guess that’s all she sees when she looks at me now,” Addy continues, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice. “Me, holding the knife above her. Me, swinging it down. All the pain she was in. She blames me for it, not just because I sawed her fucking arm off, but because it’s Will’s fault, which means it’s my fault. She never wanted to be here, I was the one who chose to stay.” 

Micheal frowns and turns to the dirt. Addy swallows, giving herself a shake. 

“I don’t know. Maybe she needs to hurt me to cope, maybe I should just let her.”

Micheal presses his lips together and looks back to her. 

“Yeah,” he agrees after a moment. “Just let her. It’s hard, but I think people come to terms with stuff in their own ways, y’know?” 

Addy licks her lips, peering at the green stains under her fingernails. 

“We’ve been through a lot of fucked up shit,” he adds, but she’s not quite sure if he’s still talking to her, exactly. Wonders if he’s talking to himself, evaluating whatever he does with the sarge, which almost certainly isn’t throwing some football around. 

Addy stretches out on her back and looks up to the leaves changing color on the trees. Embraces the nostalgia that thrums through her with golden harvest hues, takes her back to delicate crunches under her shoes and plastic pumpkins in her hands. Halloweens with Beth, where they wore matching costumes and teased Tacy to tears, stole stuffed candy bags from smaller kids and got buzzed at the cemetery off whatever booze they’d lifted from Lana. 

Zombies were fake back then, only costumes and decorations, and movies they’d watch while munching buttery popcorn from shared bowls. 

**512 Days After Outbreak**

Will returns alone, splashed with blood. Crimson human blood, not the noxious sludge that weeps from beneath the ghouls’ rotting flesh. 

“I’m sorry,” he sobs as if matters, as if how sorry he feels is going to do shit to bring Michael back. 

Protecting Michael was the only good fucking thing Addy expected out of Will and he couldn’t even do that much. She staggers back, away from him, away from the lilt of her name from Coach’s lips. 

Her head swims dizzily, then everything goes black.

* * *

  
When Addy awakens later, it’s in the bed. Someone must’ve put her here. She hopes it was Coach, but it was probably Will, and that thought makes her sicker. 

But it’s Beth who’s beside her now, peering at Addy with concern, frown folding down her pretty mouth. 

“Slocum’s really gone?” she croaks out, even though she already knows the answer to the question. “It wasn’t a bad dream?” 

“He’s really gone,” Beth confirms, voice grim but gentle. 

Addy bites her lip as the tears cloud her vision. She sobs into Beth’s chest for what feels like hours, but there’s no way to tell. The clocks don’t work anymore. 

The sobbing feels like the most violent thing she’s done in days, in weeks even. More violent than taking down a pair of zombies was yesterday, cracking their skulls like walnuts. The end of her bat left viscid and reeking of the rot that ruined every breath she drew. The sobs wrack her body until her ribs pinch painfully tight and her throat is scraped raw, mucus dribbling from her nose in sticky strands. 

Beth shushes her softly and rubs her back, but Addy shakes her head. She scrubs off the tears and squeezes the knotty, scarred nub that Beth’s right arm ends in. She rubs it tenderly and massages little circles into it, like the rituals they used to partake in back when they were still cheerleaders. Addy massages and rubs, and kisses it softly as Beth stares at her in bewilderment. 

This is the first time Addy has touched it. The first time Addy has confronted the beginning of what she’d done. 

“I’m sorry,” she sobs. “I’m sorry, Beth, I’m so sorry.” 

And when Beth blinks, something in her eyes changes. She looks at Addy as though she’s willing her to understand something important, her remaining hand gently cupped around the back of Addy’s neck. 

“What are you sorry for?” she asks and it doesn’t sound as though she’s mocking Addy at all. It leaves her lips like a genuine question. 

But Addy’s chest is impossibly tight and she cannot bring herself to say. 

**549 Days After Outbreak**

Addy and Beth spend the better part of the day searching for food they don’t find. Mother Nature is particularly vengeful this winter. Ferocious gales rip through their clothes. Snow swallows up the empty streets they used to own. Everything is frozen. Their breathes puff like gauzy phantoms in the frigid air. 

“We would’ve killed to be this thin back when we were on the squad,” Beth quips, as if she can hear the pangs gnawing Addy’s insides, her stomach shriveling inside her. 

“Tell me about it,” Addy gripes. 

They scope out a few more places but neither yield success and it’s too cold to stay out for long. Beth already lost one limb to Addy. She doesn’t need to lose another to frostbite. 

They head back home with nothing to show for it, but here’s something waiting for them when they get there. A body on his back in the snow, mouth a bloody mess and eyes vacantly fixed toward the sky. 

“Fuck,” Addy gasps out, sprinting up, slowing to stop before Coach. “The ghouls got Will?”

She’s grown so accustomed to death, somehow she isn’t actually surprised. 

“No, Will got Will,” Coach answers numbly, perhaps even more jaded than Addy is herself. She’s smoking a cigarette and she almost never does that. Only did it when she was stressed pre-apocalypse, and post-apocalypse, she’s always stressed but they’re in too finite supply to indulge. 

“He was always going to do this, Addy,” she goes on, blowing out a cloud of smoke. “He had the widest shoulders, but he was always the weakest link. This was inevitable.” 

“Or maybe it’s just easier to tell yourself that,” Beth mutters without any real bite. She’s tired too. 

Coach ignores Beth entirely, doesn’t even bat an eyelash. “Did you find any food, Addy?” 

“No.” 

Coach nods, as though this is the answer she expected. “We won’t be able to bury him. The ground is frozen. It’s too hard.” 

“So what are we going to do with him?” 

Coach takes another drag on the cigarette. 

“How hungry are you, Addy?” she asks eventually, exhaling a fine gray fog.

“Oh,” Beth says, catching on before Addy does. Her features contort in disgust and she bodily whips around. “Oh, fuck this. You’re fucking crazy.” 

She stalks away, snow encrusted boots stomping. Coach doesn’t call her back. Addy watches her go, but doesn’t call her back either. She can’t convince Beth to make a choice she hasn’t yet made herself. Or, she tells herself she hasn’t. 

But what Addy tells herself and how things are, are two very different things. When she glances back to Will, her stomach grumbles. It’s as though her hunger has made the decision for her. Addy swallows thickly and finds herself wondering if this is how the zombies feel, always, always, always operating on their hunger. There is nothing within them but hunger, unstoppable, never satiated hunger. 

“He should last us awhile,” Coach goes on. “This weather is good for keeping meat fresh.” 

Just like that, it’s settled. Addy helps Coach with the butchery. Neither of them bother asking Beth. Beth made it clear she wants no part in this, and that’s fine. Addy won’t force her to eat unless she has to. 

She and Coach don’t talk much during the process, a despicable, messy process it is. Will’s skin parts around their knives like butter, as if it were always meant to be cut. But the muscles are thicker, harder to slice through. The wet masses of his organs glisten eerily under the pale beams of winter sun. The blood makes everything slippery and the cold prickles past the protection of their gloves. 

Eventually though, their hard work pays off. Coach cooks up thick, nourishing slabs over the fire. They haven’t seasoned him with anything and still, as the fat sizzles and hisses in the skillet, the sweetest smell wafts up. Addy doesn’t want to admit that human meat smells tasty, but she’s done far worse things in the wake of the end of the world and when her mouth begins to water, she simply can’t deny it. 

It’s the first time she’s had something substantial in her stomach in weeks. 

**836 Days After Outbreak**

“You have to kill me!” 

Addy gapes at the baleful impression of teeth marks in the middle of Coach’s forearm, raw divots crusted with congealing blood. Her jaw falls open as she adamantly whips her head in refusal. 

“No, w-we’ll just cut it off! Beth!” Addy whips to her, motioning wildly at the machete in her grasp. “Cut her arm off, Beth, hurry! Before it can spread!” 

But Beth doesn’t budge. She stares at Addy as if Addy were cramming a kitten down a garbage disposal, eyes as wide as Jupiter and stark with horror. With a fierce cry, Coach loses all composure, lurching toward them, her bitten arm outstretched as her eyes blaze beneath the rapidly welling tears. 

“Goddamnit, Hanlon!” she screeches, guttural with desperation. “Just do it already! I’m dead anyway!” 

Addy looks down to the gun in her violently trembling hands, gagging on the sour taste of bile surging up her throat. 

“Kill me, Addy!” Coach screams, so inhuman she nearly sounds like one of the undead as is, spittle flying from her lips. “Don’t let me become one of them! Let me die as myself, God, Addy, please!”

The gun suddenly feels heavy as lead, heavier than any holding up any flyer ever was. Addy can scarcely keep a hold of it. Sweat slithers icily down her back and she can only shake her head as she meets Coach’s wavering gaze. 

“Pull the fucking trigger already! Quit being such a little bitch!” Coach snarls, a single tear cutting through the grime on her cheek. “I taught you better than that! After everything I’ve done for you, you can put me out of my fucking misery, Hanlon!” 

The machete clatters to the concrete and Beth steps over it, ripping Faith Hanlon’s gun from Addy’s grasp as if it weighs nothing at all. 

“No!” 

Beth pushes Addy back with the stump of her bad arm while the good one swings out. Coach shuts her eyes as Beth aims between them. 

The deafening crack of the gunshot somehow isn’t loud to enough to drown out the moist splattering of Coach’s brains against the cement. Her body topples in the next heartbeat, striking the ground with a solid thud that Addy feels in her stomach. Beth soundlessly lowers the gun to her side. 

Addy stumbles around her, dropping to her knees beside Coach’s fallen form. Blood pools around her head, washing over the squishy chunks of brain matter and swallowing up the stark white fragments of shattered skullcap. Thin streams trickle from her ears and nostrils, a smudge at the corner of her parted lips. 

“Addy—“ 

“Don’t.” 

“She was a goner the second she got bit,” Beth breathes out, low and daunted. 

“You couldn’t stand her, you could hardly fucking wait for this day,” Addy snaps even though she knows it is unfair. A vicious exaggeration ripped forth from fresh grief as it drags her down like an undertow. 

“I’ll give you some time,” Beth sighs wearily. 

Addy doesn’t respond. For a long while, her eyes are locked onto Coach’s empty ones. She tries to search for life in them somehow, even as the puddle of blood spreads, chunks of brain floating in the viscous crimson. Eventually it soaks through Addy’s jeans, warm as bathwater, and that’s when she fucking loses it. 

She snaps forward and buries her face into Coach’s chest, smothering her anguished wail into its godawful stillness. Sobs violently wrack her body. The rungs of her ribs rattle around her heart as it’s ripped raw all over again. 

Time suspends itself. 

Coach’s body is beginning to stiffen up when Addy finally forces herself to release it, throat sore from endless stifled screams. Her eyes have sunken into the sockets, skin gone dusky gray. Addy stands and stumbles toward her mother’s gun. Somethings severs inside as she picks it up, a sense of finality burrowing into her bones. If she looks back at Coach’s body, she doesn’t know what she’ll become, so she walks away instead. 

* * *

Beth is waiting when Addy strips down to nothing and wades into the river. 

“Thanks for doing that for her,” Addy mumbles, voice hoarse with pain. “Thanks for doing that for her when I just…couldn’t.” 

Beth blinks slowly. “I didn’t do it for her.” 

Well, of course she didn’t. Addy bobs her head and then watches as Beth takes pity on her for the second time on this unspeakably horrible day, wetting a preciously rare bar of soap. She moves toward Addy, water sloshing between her legs as she works up a foamy lather between her fingers. 

She guides the sudsy bar of soap across Addy’s skin, washing Colette’s blood away. Addy swallows, compliantly spreading her arms. Beth is gentle as a tigress grooming her cub and if Addy hadn’t already been wrung to dehydration with her tears, she thinks the sheer mercy of this act could make her cry. She says something that is probably cruel instead, as she can be counted on to do. 

“It’s just you and me now,” she whispers. “Like you wanted it.” 

Beth all but rolls her eyes, sighing through her nose as she guides the bar of soap across Addy’s shoulder blades. 

“No one wanted this,” she says. 

The bubbles pop and Addy inhales the zesty scent of bergamot, closing her eyes. 

“You have me all to yourself.” 

“That’s not even true.” Beth clucks her tongue. 

“It is. It’s only the two of us left now. It’s always us. Somehow Beth, it’s always us.” 

“Addy.” 

The way Beth says her name makes her eyes open. And then she sees Beth’s, glistening like polished sapphires under shields of unshed tears. 

“Tell the truth, for once in your life,” she begs. 

“I don’t know—“ 

“You do.” Beth holds her cheek in a soapy hand. “Addy, you do. You remember that night. The night I got bit. Think back to that night.” 

“No.” Addy shakes her head, dispelling the memories before they can rise to the surface. 

“Addy, you have to.” Beth sounds exhausted. 

“But I don’t want to,” Addy croaks out. “It was the worst night of my life. Why do you want to make me remember the worst night of my life, Beth?” 

“Because it was the last night of mine,” Beth murmurs simply. 

Addy’s stomach twists in all kinds of knots, like those stupid bracelets they used to make at cheer camp. 

“It’s time to stop pretending, Addy.” Beth suddenly seizes her shoulder and dunks her beneath the water as though she’s a preacher baptizing a new believer. 

Addy chokes and splutters as Beth abruptly pulls her out again.

“What the fuck!” she shrieks, spitting out water. “Why would you do that?” 

“I didn’t. I didn’t do anything because I’m not actually here.” Beth lets go of her shoulder. “I’m dead, Addy. I’ve been dead for a long time.” 

“Stop it!” Addy whips around and stalks back to shore, fists at her sides. 

Somehow, when she reaches the land, Beth is already there. Bone dry, hand cupped over her mouth as she stares at Addy with the saddest eyes Addy has ever seen. 

“Are we going to pretend forever?” she asks, cool as moonbeams in the grass. 

“I’m not pretending,” Addy dismisses, reaching for her shirt. 

Colette’s blood had mostly dried, but becomes wet again from her hands. The sharp, metallic scent of it assaults her nose and Addy gasps, dropping to her knees. Then Beth is beside her, leaning her head against Addy’s shoulder. 

“You remember the night I got bit,” she repeats. “What you did.” 

“Yes,” Addy huffs. “I cut off your arm to save your fucking life, but you’ve been pissed and sulking ever since and I’m— I’m sorry, okay? I know that means no more handsprings, or headstands, but it’s not like we’ll ever be cheerleaders again anyway, Beth! It’s over now. Everything is over now.” 

“You killed me,” Beth says and Addy’s stomach churns even though her voice is light as heather. “You didn’t mean to. You tried to save me, but it didn’t work.” 

Addy turns to face her, heart lodged in her throat. “Beth. Stop, please.” 

“Why?” Beth tilts her head. “You said it yourself, everything is over now.” 

Addy licks her lips and reaches for her mother’s gun. She picks it up and idly turns it over in her hands. Her thin, thin, hands, brittle nails still ruby flecked in spite of Beth’s efforts with the soap. 

“I lost too much blood,” Beth continues, almost clinically. “I didn’t make it through the night. I went into shock and I died in your lap.” 

“I know,” Addy admits at last, bowing her head as an abyss opens within her, everything she is devoured by despair. 

She had buried the memory in the chambers of her heart even deeper than Will had buried Beth in the woods. Everything went wrong. The blood had poured from her arm by the buckets, like the belt couldn’t do a damn thing to stem the flow. It drenched Addy to the skin. 

Not long after the butchery of the limb, she’d found she couldn’t rouse Beth, limp as a doll in her lap. She’d sobbed _please, please, please,_ never so desperate as she was cradling Beth to her chest. But no matter how she pleaded, Beth’s breaths got shallower and her flesh grew cooler. 

Addy forced her lips overtop of Beth’s and tried to breathe the life back into her. Pushed her tongue into Beth’s mouth and passionately kissed her, bloodstained hands pressed to her Beth’s damp, chilly cheeks as she tried to seduce her into having a heartbeat again, because if there’s anything Beth would pull through for, surely it would be Addy’s kiss. But it was too late. Her tongue was a solid lump against Addy’s tearful probing. 

After the fact, she supposes the others just played along as much as they could to help her stay sane. Maybe they were all just afraid of what she would’ve been if they hadn’t, how she might’ve turned on them if they’d dared to disrupt her fantasy. Well, maybe not Michael. He was always kind, too kind to contradict anything Addy needed to cling to. But she won’t dwell much on the motives of the other two. Not now. No need for that now. 

“Are you a ghost?” she asks, defeated. 

“Don’t think so. Just a guilty conscience, I guess,” Beth pops her lips and gives her knee a sympathetic squeeze. “You shouldn’t feel so guilty, Addy. I know you tried to save me. And in a way, you still did. Because I didn’t turn into one of them.” 

Addy meets her gaze. 

“Colette’s a total cunt but she was right about that much.” Beth’s lips twist in a grimace, eyes piercing. “It’s better to die as yourself. Better to go down a person than a mindless fucking zombie.” 

Addy looks away from her and over to the hill on the other side of the river, where a horde of the undead come scrambling down, already locked onto her scent. She doesn’t bother to calculate how long it’ll take them to get to her, if indeed they can swim across. 

“Yeah,” she agrees with Beth. “It really is.” 

Addy lifts the gun and opens her mouth, sliding the muzzle between the rows of her teeth. Shivers race up her spine as the cold taste of metal tingles on her tongue. 

**Author's Note:**

> Zombie AUs are goldmines of gore and angst, it's actually unthinkable that I wouldn't do one. 
> 
> Fun Fact: I nearly titled this 'will on the grill' and cracked myself up for a solid minute or so, but then decided not to because A) I am not as funny as I think I am and B) doing so would've implied cannibalizing Will is the whole fic when that was only like, a smidgen of it.
> 
> Also, I am here to recommend the movie Doggy Poo to any and all of you who are reading this rn. Most inspirational movie about a literal piece of shit I've ever seen.
> 
> Will fix typos when I'm less stoned.
> 
> Edit: Think I fixed most of the typos.


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